On Your Marks

The jeep scandal in 1948 that began independent India's tryst with corruption. V.K. Krishna Menon, the then Indian high commissioner to UK, ignored norms to sign a Rs 80 lakh contract for the purchase of army jeeps

Nehru refused a permanent seat in the UN that the US and Soviet Union offered to India in 1955, for he believed the seat belonged to China. Ironically, Beijing blocks India's entry to the Security Council today.

The dismissal of the first elected Communist government in Kerala in 1959, following a popular, Cong-backed ‘liberation struggle’

Nehru's ‘forward policy’ of putting up posts on Sino-Indian border which provoked the Chinese and led to the 1962 conflict

The dispute over sharing the water of rivers Ravi, Beas and Sutlej between Punjab and Haryana. Or the one between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu on Cauvery.

Remember Capt Rustom Nagarwala, attached to raw, who mimicked Indira Gandhi's voice over the phone in 1971, asking an sbi employee to hand over Rs 60 lakh to a Bangladeshi? He succeeded, but was arrested.

Travel restrictions, imposed ironically after Bangladesh became independent in 1971.

Sycophancy hit a new low after mgr’s win in the 1972 Dindigul byelection. Dregs of soda left in a bottle from which he drank, were poured into a drum of water and redistributed as holy water.

Declaration of Emergency, from June 25, 1975, to March 21, 1977, in the world's largest democracy, a chapter we wish didn't exist in our history books

Sanjay Gandhi's forced sterilisation programme in 1976, the stigma of which still haunts government health drives, like the anti-polio campaign

Sunil Gavaskar's snail-paced unbeaten knock (36 runs off 174 balls) in the inaugural match of the first World Cup in 1975 between England and India, which we lost

The Bhopal gas tragedy on December 3, 1984, probably the world's deadliest industrial accident and a continuing blot

Bhindranwale and the idea of Khalistan, which all but dismembered India in the 1980s

Operation Bluestar of 1984. We are still dealing with the hatred and acrimony it unleashed.

Nadendla Bhaskar Rao's palace coup in N.T. Rama Rao's absence in August 1984.
He was ousted by the latter a month later.

Indira Gandhi's assassination by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984 and the anti-Sikh riots that followed

Luddite Communists smashing computers and campaigning against non-Communist governments' modernisation during the 1980s

The Rs 64-crore Bofors scam that broke in 1987. We have spent even more
since trying to indict the accused, all in vain.

India's military intervention in Sri Lanka in 1987, leading to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991, at Sriperumbudur

Bizarre display of sycophancy when Jayalalitha was Tamil Nadu CM (1991-96). These included wearing grass skirts, rolling around a temple, walking on fire, even enacting one's cremation, all to ensure her long life.

The Babri Masjid demolition on December 6, 1992, and the Mumbai riots and blasts that followed. Other communal pogroms like the Gujarat riots are still a blot on our secular democracy.

Prohibition drives that failed, like N.T. Rama Rao's 1994 measure. The ban was lifted in 1997. Haryana CM Bansi Lal also imposed one in 1996.

The ugly side-effects of the IT boom in Bangalore in the 1990s and 2000s: haphazard urbanisation, increased crime and suicide rates

The fake stamp paper scam in which Abdul Karim Telgi and co amassed Rs 30,000 crore in the 1990s

Jayalalitha's pompous and vulgar act of turning Chennai into a wedding venue for her foster son V.N. Sudhakaran in 1995

The CPI(M) politburo refusing to give Jyoti Basu the go-ahead to become PM in 1996 despite him being a consensus candidate

Legislators of the UP assembly hurling mikes and chairs at the speaker in October 1997. Such unruly acts have since been repeated on several occasions.

The hijacking of Indian Airlines IC-814 in December 1999. The aircraft was flown to Kandahar. The passengers were freed, but only after Jaswant Singh escorted three released militants.

The match-fixing scam of 2000 that resulted in a ban on Mohammed Azharuddin, till then India's cricket captain, and tarnished the gentleman's game

Former BJP president Bangaru Laxman accepting Rs 1 lakh in 2001 from journalists
posing as middlemen of a defence equipment firm

The 2001 coffin scam in which money was made on the coffins meant to bring back dead soldiers from Kargil

The spat between the Ambani brothers Mukesh and Anil and their corporations in 2004 revealed how India's businesses are run more like fiefdoms

Letting forest brigand Veerappan remained at large—poaching elephants and
smuggling sandalwood. He remained in business for two decades till he was killed by
the police in 2004.

The theft of Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel in 2004 from a museum in Vishwa
Bharati in Shantiniketan

I think only #6 of the 16 stands a chance of becoming a reality ,as the SC has already struck down the sodomy laws and has asked the state as to why prostitution should not be de-criminalized.
As for the rest- will never happen- no neta in this fetid land wants to further his own undoing by his own doing.

A good one. I would have liked to see what challenges need to be faced in future to make our democracy better and stronger. Some that came to my mind:
1. Come out with strict laws (and implement them) to prevent hooligans like Raj Thackeray from building goonda fiefdoms.
2. Ban moral policing as a whole and put people like Muthalik and his ilk behind bars for good. Nobody will miss him.
3. Make reservation more meaningful. Remove caste based reservation and introduce affirmative action based primarily on economic conditions.
4. Work towards meaningful representation of women in politics.
5. Pass stringent laws or severe punishments to deter attention seekers from filing frivolous lawsuits.
6. Work towards progressive gay rights.
7. Ban religion based political parties.
8. Empower minorities through education - not inducement.
9. Come up with a way to reduce and eliminate family/dynastic rule.
10. Work towards establishing a common civil code (as envisioned by our founding fathers).
11. Free the police force from the clutches of Babus and modernize them to match the best of the world.
12. Minimize Government interference in the lives of citizens - people can decide what to watch, eat and drink. So, no prohibition and no censorship. The censor board must only be used to rate movies.
13. Implement universal health care.
14. Dramatically increase institutions of learning - schools to colleges.
15. Modernize the army and stand up to bullies like China.
16. Implement electoral reforms.

">>Nehru's ‘forward policy’ of putting up posts on Sino-Indian border which provoked the Chinese and led to the 1962 conflict. "

This is absurd since it assumes Chinese need to be provoked. That is BS. China has been making incursions into Indian territory since the time they got a firm foothold in Tibet.

And one thing needs to be pointed out. The Army was against the checkpost concept. The Army said if you are going to install checkposts, beef it up with sufficient force so that it has some teeth-or else put no checkpost.

Nehru, true to form, blundered. He installed checkposts but refused to fortify it. And the result being the men at security posts were routinely harassed and in some cases killed.

>>Nehru's ‘forward policy’ of putting up posts on Sino-Indian border which provoked the Chinese and led to the 1962 conflict.

Sneaky item. Nehru was right, reacting to a long list of provocations from the Chinese, who had crossed the McMohan line. This after their bloody and forcible occupation of Tibet in 1951, Aksai Chin in 1950, and wrong map from China, showing 120,000 km of Indian territory as Chinese. He was only trying to counteract Zhou-en-Lai's insistence on "facts on the ground".

We all know Faruki- when not defending the Ulema, like the true Cong loyalist, he's all fired-up defending the venal Nehru Dynasty.
Why? Because they're perceived as being unstintingly Pro-Islamic and at he same time, anti-Hindu to the hilt, which gives him that warm, fuzzy feeling all over.

>> Tharoor's book is poorly researched. An improbable story is copied from one publication to another until it gets a life of its own!

There was a lengthy discussion here on this subject a couple of years ago. No reliable source was found for the assertion that India was offered a permanent seat on the security council either by the US or the USSR in 1950's. The Eisenhower/Dulles administration was not too friendly with India. It all boiled down to Nehru's thinking aloud with his private secretary after a meeting with Bulganin, and what was reported from some cocktail party in Washington. The story gained cohernce when it was picked up by those who were keen to defame Nehru.

>> The darling of the intellectuals these days, Shashi Tharoor had this to say ..."Jawaharlal Nehru "declined a United States offer" to India to "take the permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council".

Tharoor's book is poorly researched. An improbable story is copied from one publication to another until it gets a life of its own!